The environment that architecture must reconcile is no longer regulated by the traditional assumptions of “place”. De-centralization has dissolved the boundaries between city and suburb. Downtowns have become as bland as any suburban shopping mall, while the suburbs have attained much of the avant-garde culture and crime that were once associated with the metropolis. Likewise the differentiations in commercial and domestic zoning have become more flexible, allowing one to work from home, or live in a commercial building.